It's all temporary

SUBHEAD: Media and the devices that present content are transient like everything else. Get used to it.

By Juan Wilson on 13 March 2017 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/03/its-all-temporary.html)


Image above: Photo of obsolete and/or broken technologies I keep on a windowsill to remind me of the transience of media reality. Photo by Juan Wilson.

The last few weeks I've been trying to replay some video tapes I shot in the years between 1997 and 2007. In that decade I was using Sony Hi8 Digital video camera. I had about almost a hundred hours plus of recordings. My kids, my wife's kids, living in Panama NY, visiting Panama Central America. Living on Maui, renting a house on the Big Island, moving to Kauai, etc.

Problem was my older SonyHi8 was dead and the newer Digital Hi8 wasn't tracking the tape well. I went to Ebay and found  an "as good as new" digital Hi8. It tore three tapes in half. I returned it and went back to my newer Hi8. After lots of coaxing I got it to go and have been able to view a few of the tapes.

Bottom line. You cannot go back very far relying on digital recordings or records of your life to be there when you want them in the future.

I have kept libraries of records from various digital technologies going back to the 1960's and unless I get a special pass for the "Old Digital Devices section of the Smithsonian Museum I will likely never see or hear the content of those libraries.

For example, in the late 1960's I was studying architecture at the Cooper Union in New York. They had a new computer center that took up two classrooms that ran Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) state of the art PDP-8 computer. It compiled programs and read data off punch cards and would type the results on a 17" wide chain driven impact printer.

A classmate, Ralph Lerner and I wrote structural engineering programs in Fortran IV and could calculate structural engineering stresses on various frames by punching cards describing loads and their arrangement on the frame. The impact printer would draw the frame and note results of calculations.

I have a library of all the programs Ralph and I wrote. They have weathered the 50 years but I have no DEC computer to compile programs and run data cards through. In fact DEC corporation, once number the number two to IBM, no longer exists. I will never see those programs run again.

Later, in the early 1980s working in the field of architecture at Davis Brody & Associates I used DEC VAX-11 computer. The VAX was the first widely used 32-bit minicomputer.

The VAX-11 was capable of running serious Computer Aided Design software. Davis-Brody had a version of G3, the program designed for General Electric to do engineering drawings for such things as nuclear power plants.

Our first workstation cost $250,000. AutoCad today costs about 1% of that today.

I still have DEC 1" compact tapes that contain the G3 program and the macro-programs we developed specifically for architecture. Those tapes will never see a VAX-11 again.

I also have 5.25" floppies from PC computers as well as 3.5" floppies used by Amiga and Macintosh machines. I even have an bunch of 100mb ZIP discs. None of these will be spun up.

I won't go into the various other formats for work and entertainment I have kept remnants of, but the list goes on.

What has worked of all those decades? Reel-to-reel and LP records. Machines to play those media are still being manufactured. I think the most durable recording technology in my lifetime has been the cassette audio tape. I have several hundred that go back to the early 1970s and they still sound fresh. I think that's in part because I recorded most on high-end tapes.

It is getting harder to find cassette tape recorders, but they are still available. If you want to hear your tapes into the future get a good one like the Tascam CC-222 mk IV.

I received a CC0-222 from my wife Linda for my 70th birthday two years ago. It's a wonderful machine - a high end cassette that will dub a tape to CD or a CD to tape. The later path might be in order after you read the article below on CD disintegration.

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Your CD's are rotting

SUBHEAD: Certifying a CD-ROM did not place any requirement on the chemical or physical stability of the disc.

By Cory Doctorow on 11 March 2017 for Boing Boing -
(http://boingboing.net/2017/03/11/bitrot.html)


Image above: A CD of questionable veracity. From original article.

In 2009, the Library of Congress commissioned a research report into the degradation of CD-ROMs in storage as a way of assessing the integrity of the media in its collection: the news isn't pretty.

The standards for certifying a CD-ROM did not "place any requirement on the chemical or physical stability of the disc," so depending on the manufacturer and process, the discs you've put away on shelves may have wildly different material properties.

The study involved taking a trove of discarded/duplicate CD-ROMs from the LoC's collection and subjecting them to "accelerated aging" processes to see how many errors emerged as the media aged. Keeping discs dry and cool helped reduce error rates, but even so there's a lot of bitrot there.

One thing that's happened since this study is an acceleration in the plunging costs of online storage -- HDDs and SSDs -- and cloud services, which are all "live" media, regulated by microcontrollers that continuously poll their storage media for degradation, marking off sectors as bad when they turn and copying their data to still-good sectors before it becomes unreadable.

This is a major difference between today's state of affairs and the long, awkward adolescence of mass storage, when keeping all your data online was prohibitively expensive, which meant that some fraction of your archives would end up on offline/nearline media, from tapes to CDs to Zip and Jazz and floppy discs.

All media is subject to entropy, but offline/nearline media is not easily hedged against the Second Law of Thermodynamics with measures like continuous scheduled offsite backups and continuous defect-scanning.

The results of this study show that individual CD-ROM life expectancies in a large collection such as that held by the Library of Congress can be expected to cover a wide range. In addition, the BLER degradation rate of individual discs will be dependant on the environmental conditions to which the disc is exposed. Selecting optimal conditions for temperature and relative humidity in facilities where compact discs are stored can be expected to have a significant impact on service life.

Other factors not covered in this study, such as handling, labeling, and exposure to certain materials or chemicals, also affect service life and must be considered as part of a comprehensive approach to preserving digital information on compact disc media.
The test population selected for this experiment was extremely diverse; representing discs constructed using different materials, from different manufacturers and record labels.

Although the selected discs covered a relatively limited period of manufacture the wide distribution of life expectancies demonstrates the effect of these varied construction parameters on disc life. 10% of the discs failed at an estimated life of less than 25 years, including 6 discs (5%) that failed too early to obtain meaningful data or a meaningful lifetime estimate. 23 discs (16%) had insufficient increase in errors during the test, and thus, had infinite lifetimes, by the standards of the ISO test method. These results illustrate why it is so difficult to make broad generalizations about the lifetime of optical media.

The Library of Congress plans to conduct analyses of the material composition of selected discs from both this study and the on-going Natural Aging Study to look for trends in failure modes as they relate to the chemistry of the disc. An understanding of these failure modes can help in identifying discs that are prone to early failure so that the data can be transferred to more stable media before they reach end-of-life.

COMPACT DISC SERVICE LIFE: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ESTIMATED SERVICE LIFE OF PRERECORDED COMPACT DISCS (CD-ROM) [Chandru J. Shahani, Michele H. Youket and Norman Weberg/Library of Congress]

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Next Tango in Paris

SUBHEAD: When things get bad enough, the meme can move from niche to mainstream. It is already all ready.

By Alan Bates on 31 October 2015 for The Great Change -
(http://peaksurfer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-next-tango-in-paris.html)


Image above: Photo of French Resistance fighters defending a corner in Paris during WWII overlaid over same corner today. From (http://golem13.fr/70-ans-liberation-de-paris/).

"Sweden has decided to decommission all its nuclear plants but has yet to propose a similar program to phase out its wind turbines."

"Carbon-neutral is so 20th century. We really need to get beyond zero. That is what ecovillages can offer."

We were just concluding a conference call for Global Ecovillage Network delegates in the run-up to the UN climate summit one month from now in Paris when we said that. The discussion had turned to what our message should be. There is a very good program initiated by ten European ecovillages, called the Fossil-Fuel Free Community Challenge. It is very ambitious, and tracks what Sweden, already carbon-neutral, has recently pledged.

It is one thing to gradually wean yourself from fossil energy by increments, such as by putting a tax on carbon at the source, as Al Gore tried unsuccessfully to do in 1992, or to strip the fossil industry of its obscene subsidies, as Bill McKibben urges. It is quite another to go cold turkey.

Costa Rica met its entire national power demand using renewable energy for 75 consecutive days this year, but that was only electricity, and anyway, it was Costa Rica. On a spectacularly windy day this past July, Denmark generated 140% of its electrical power from wind alone.

A recent study by Mark Jacobson, David Blittersdorf, and Tom Murphy, originally published by Energy XChange September 28, 2015, shows it is quite possible to switch the whole world to renewables right now, at no net cost.

To get off carbon, Sweden will have to close its nuclear plants, which have a huge carbon footprint, about 16 kg CO2e per MWh despite what technophiles James Hansen, George Monbiot or James Lovelock may tell you after having drunk the Atomic Kool Aid. Wind power, by contrast, generates 10 kg per MWh. Sweden has decided to decommission all its nuclear plants, but has yet to propose a similar program to phase out wind turbines.

Personally we have no problem endorsing a massive switch to renewables and the sooner the better, but one also needs to place a caveat under that about it not exactly replacing fossil fuels. Nor will it salvage consumer culture.

If one were to think of it in terms of megajoules of energy, we were living off a current account of sunlight up until about 200 years ago, when we discovered that earth had been frugally putting aside a billion-year pension account all this time. That was supposed to help the planet go nova when the Sun runs out of hydrogen.

What did we do? We started withdrawing, gradually at first, then faster, and now as fast as we possibly can. We have withdrawn a little more than half of that inheritance now, mainly the easy to reach part.

We can't withdraw the remainder because (a) it costs more than we can afford to spend; and (b) it would fry the planet. So we are slowly coming to the realization that we may have to return to our former mainstay, the current income account; you know, the sunlight.

The savings account was a very rich endowment, though. Eating through 500 million years of fossil sunlight in 200 years enabled each of us to have hundreds of energy slaves at our beck and call. As Richard Heinberg says, a cup of gasoline can take a 2-ton truck over a mountain. How many horses would have to be fed how much grain to accomplish the same task? How many hours of wind generators charging batteries? Heinberg points out:

Making pig iron—the main ingredient in steel—requires blast furnaces. Making cement requires 100-meter-long kilns that operate at 1500 degrees C. In principle it is possible to produce high heat for these purposes with electricity or giant solar collectors, but nobody does it that way now because it would be much more expensive than burning coal or natural gas.

Crucially, current manufacturing processes for building solar panels and wind turbines also depend upon high-temperature industrial processes fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas. Again, alternative ways of producing this heat are feasible in principle—but the result would probably be significantly higher-cost solar and wind power. And there are no demonstration projects to show us just how easy or hard this would be.

Zero carbon power, or zero fossil fuels, while a wonderful goal, and one put out by Greenpeace USA  and 350.org, will entail more sacrifice than many people, including even the Swedes, understand. For one thing, the energy return on invested energy (EROIE) is less than 4:1 for wind, which is marginal and produces only electricity, unless you are pumping water.

Biofuels are 1:1.4, or negative return. Corn ethanol costs more Btu — and horsepower — to make than it can provide when combusted. Contrast fossil fuels at historical returns of 100:1 to 40:1 (although falling off the precipice now as we spend more to obtain less).

Electrification of all sectors — heating, cooling, industrial processes, and transportation — would be implicit to an all-renewable economy. But we would need to reduce total energy use by approximately 70 percent, maybe more, to make that switch. Efficiency improvements could potentially take us part way but not all the way.

If there is one thing ecovillages should be good at, it should be making crisis mitigation fun. We weary of the hair shirt approach to mitigating climate change. We can cut consumption and party too. But then Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries, have a "set an impossible goal and lead by example" culture when it comes to climate negotiations.

Not only have they not gotten any other countries to go along, but their own populations have balked at the austerity required, throwing out progressive governments and replacing them with conservatives, who are anything but conservers, Ponzi'ing up bigger mountains of debt and fattening the larders of banksters with the proceeds of liquidated public assets.

Sure, we have some great fossil-fuel free islands in Denmark and a bicycle autobahn in Germany, but honestly, how many businessmen do you know that would garage the BMW in favor of a 15-speed Hase Spezialräder for that meeting in Bonn, especially in winter?

The alternative we have proposed is to net sequester – go beyond zero – at the home, village and regional scale. The tools we have for accomplishing this are many – carbon farming, eco-agroforestry, biomass energy with carbon capture, and biochar in everything from clothing to buildings.

As we have posted previously, these simple changes can switch civilization from its current trajectory – one that ensures near term human extinction (“NTHE”) — to something we have been calling Civilization 2.0, which returns the planet to something approximating the comfortable Holocene in which we evolved, within a reasonable time. The time variable is the unknown here, because it is unlikely that COP-21, with its low ambition, will do much to speed the necessary conversion.

Will it be possible to live in the high style of consumer culture in our Civilization 2.0? No chance. But we can continue living, and have quite abundant, happy lives, and that is no small deal. The alternative really is NTHE.

George Monbiot writes:

Governments ignore issues when the media ignores them. And the media ignores them because … well there’s a question with a thousand answers, many of which involve power. But one reason is the complete failure of perspective in a de-skilled industry dominated by corporate press releases, photo ops and fashion shoots, where everyone seems to be waiting for everyone else to take a lead. The media makes a collective non-decision to treat this catastrophe as a non-issue, and we all carry on as if it’s not happening.

At the climate summit in Paris in December, the media, trapped within the intergovernmental bubble of abstract diplomacy and manufactured drama, will cover the negotiations almost without reference to what is happening elsewhere. The talks will be removed to a realm with which we have no moral contact. And, when the circus moves on, the silence will resume. Is there any other industry that serves its customers so badly?

Rob Hopkins writes:

Change happens in interesting ways.  For example, recently, a community campaign where I live challenged a large local charitable landowner's land use decisions, in particular its decision to submit large swathes of land for development.  The community campaign questioned the link between the organization's stated values and its actions. 

Looking back in hindsight, it's interesting to see how the change unfolded, and how there is no one single Great Change Moment to point to.  But at the moment when the then CEO of the organization was brazening it out, telling everyone how the organization was listening and responding when it was clear that he really wasn't, actually the ground had been eaten away from under him, and it was empty words, and a month later he had stood down.  Events were moving, the world around him was changing, he had been left behind.

Similarly the GDR, East Germany, looked to be robust, powerful and permanent in the days before the Berlin Wall came down.  In reality, we now know, it was holed below the waterline, undermined by the number of young people defecting to the West, corruption, rigged elections and much more.

But until the Wall came down, you'd never have known.  So how can we know, in the moment, which point in time we might point to as the moment when the change actually happened?

While Paris looks likely to not be that Great Change Moment, perhaps it is we who need to take a different approach here.

Our role in Paris, or during that time, in my opinion, is not to see this event as a Great Change Moment, rather as just yet another important step in the ongoing – and of course massively urgent - building of a new, low carbon world.  Instead, we should focus, during that time, on celebrating what is already happening.  And there is much to celebrate.

We travel to these fetes and hang out our wares so that passersby can notice and lodge our new meme somewhere in the back of their collective brain. When things get bad enough, the meme can move from niche to mainstream. It is already all ready.


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Barbarism Versus Stupidism

SUBHEAD: As reality drags us kicking and screaming toward it, the likelihood of a domestic political convulsion increases.

By James Kunstler on 22 Spetember 2014 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/barbarism-versus-stupidism/)


Image above: Oil painting "Talent Show" by Mark Bryan, 2012. From (http://www.artofmarkbryan.com/recent-work/?dop_wall_grid_gallery_id=1&dop_wall_grid_gallery_share=18).

In my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today.
 
The US-led campaign to tilt Ukraine to Euroland and NATO — and away from the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union — turned an “intelligence” fiasco into a strategic humiliation for the Obama White House. 

Notice that the story has vamoosed utterly from the American media headlines, even when the Russian Engineers’ Union issued a report last week asserting that the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was most likely shot down by 30mm cannon fire from Ukrainian military aircraft. 

The USA State Department didn’t deign to refute it because doing so would have drawn attention to the fact that it was the only plausible explanation for what happened.

Likewise, the campaign to paint Vladimir Putin as Stalin-in-a-judo-robe never really reached take-off velocity, since by all appearances he was the most rational and cool-headed actor on the geopolitical stage, following logical and long-established national interests. If the West had just left Ukraine alone, and allowed it to join the Eurasian Customs Union, that basket-case nation would have been Russia’s economic ward. 

Now the US and the EU have to support it with billions in loans that will never be paid back. Meanwhile, our European allies have been snookered into a set of economic and financial sanctions against Russia that guarantees they’ll be starved for oil and gas supplies in the winter months ahead. Smooth move.

So, the reason that all this has vanished from the news media is that it’s game-over in Ukraine. We busted it up, and can do more with it, and pretty soon the rump Ukraine region run out of Kiev will go crawling back to Russia begging for a little heating fuel.

Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)? 

First, there is the astonishing humiliation that this ragtag band of psychopaths managed to undo ten years, 4,500 US battle deaths, and $1+ trillion worth of nation-building effort in Iraq in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle.

So, now we’re going to just deal “death from above” on the Black Flaggers across that stretch of their captured territory that runs from Iraq into Syria — violating Syria’s sovereignty in the process, of course. My guess is that such an operation will inspire them to bring the action straight to Europe, the USA, and the grand prize, Saudi Arabia. 

The movement is too broad now, includes too many psychopaths from all over the world (Europe especially) who hold passports that will enable them to travel easily out of the Middle East and export mayhem wherever they want to bring it.

The USA is stuck within so many pathways of systems criticality in this fall of 2014, that is sure to be expressed in our own internal politics very soon. We’re all set up for a classic state of siege with the Pentagon militarizing every Podunk police department in the land, and one can easily imagine a single IS operation aimed at some soft American target shoving us into hysteria.

While all this is happening, of course, Wall Street and its hand-maidens rev up the engines of malinvestment and bid up false values of things that will do nothing to get us safely into the economy of real things that awaits us. That economy of real things I speak of does not include many of the comforts and conveniences we’re used to — mass motoring, national chain retail, air-conditioning for all, 24/7 electric service — but it’s where we’re going. 

As reality drags us kicking and screaming toward it, the likelihood of a domestic political convulsion increases. We’ll look back on these weirdly placid years after the 2008 train wreck with amazement. These are the rudderless years of no leadership, of cowardly dissimulating midgets. A people can only take so much of that.

Finance is the weakest link in the chain of systems that allows us to run the old economy. It’s the system most abstracted from reality and the most easily manipulated into ever-greater abstraction. 

Hence it’s the system most easily subject to fatal slippage. And all it takes to set off the slipping is a simple loss of faith.

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Petrolify - Are you on it?

SOURCE: Katherine Muzik (kmuzik@gmail.com)
SUBHEAD: Warning: This miracle drug comes with some deadly side effects, and an expiration date.

By Asher Miller on 3 September 2014 for the Post Carbon Institiute -
(http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/2350950-introducing-petrolify-r-the-power-of-petroleum)


Image above: Stillf frame from advertisement below. From (http://www.petrolify.com/).

Imagine there was a pill you could take every day that would provide you with wealth, freedom, and luxuries beyond the imagination of even the wealthiest kings of yesteryear. Taking this pill would give you the equivalent of hundreds of slaves, working for you 24/7, to grow your food, cool and heat your home, entertain you, carry you however far you wanted to travel, fill your bath with hot water, you name it… That’d be amazing!

Well, guess what? You’re already taking it. And it’s called Petrolify®.

You’re ingesting Petrolify® with nearly every breath and every footstep you take. Most of us don’t realize that Petrolify® is being pumped into our water and injected into our food. But we reap its magical benefits regardless. Did you sleep indoors last night? You can thank Petrolify®. Did you eat breakfast today? Again, that was thanks to Petrolify®. Are you reading this message on your mobile phone or computer? The miracle of Petrolify® never ends!

Except that miracle comes with some deadly side effects, and an expiration date.


Video above: A satirical advertisement for the medication "Petrolify®. From (http://youtu.be/RhgBeT_gkJU).

That is why we created the above parody commercial, to remind as many people as possible that the dream we’re living—a dream fueled by a one-time, finite fossil fuel bonanza—is far darker than they might suspect.

When we open our eyes to the hidden costs of Petrolify®, it’s easy to blame the ‘corporate bad guys’—the manufacturers, the drug reps, the doctors—who are pushing their product on an unwilling populace. But we’re not quite so unwilling, are we? No, we want what they’re selling. And, there is no “they”. They are us.

Thankfully, our wellbeing doesn’t have to depend on Petrolify®. We can choose for our energy needs to be met with renewable, and more ecological and socially just, sources. More important, we can learn to live well with less. Conservation doesn’t have to be the “c” word.

The first step is recognizing our pill-popping addiction for what it is. Please help spread the word that Petrolify® may not be right for us at (http://www.petrolify.com/).


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The Fifth Horseman

SUBHEAD: Reality is confined to the obscure corners where the (bulk of users) idiots can’t be bothered to look.

By Steve Ludlum on 3 September 2014 for Economic Undertow -
(http://www.economic-undertow.com/2014/09/03/the-fifth-horseman/)


Image above: "The Fifth Horseman" illustration.From (http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/fifth-Horseman-War-and-ruin.jpg).

It is hard to tell whether Keynes had the entire United States in mind. Watching the leering, blithering president stumbling around like a drunk at a Christmas party it is clear that the country’s organizational framework is hopelessly corroded.

The only question is how long is it going to last?

If you take some time away from the Internet (as I have been doing for the past few weeks) it is stunningly clear that content for the most part is aggravating noise. Every argument has fifteen sides larded over with conspiracy theories.

The web is truly Hobbes’ war of all against all … with kitten videos. The major media outlets offer platefuls of propaganda-advertising disguised as ‘news stories’ while (most of) the rest churn out nonsense. The Internet enables those with modest mental horsepower but with co-optable ideology to disrupt/distract everyone else.

Common purpose — reality — is confined to the obscure corners where the (bulk of users) 
idiots can’t be bothered to look.

— Moral clarity versus the president’s bumbling duplicity. Events of the past year or so indicate that the West has reached the end of the ‘Age of Expedients’ and entering the far more demanding ‘Age of Consequences’.

Civilization advances by way of the general increase in of the distribution of information. We humans invented language first to coordinate our activities as hunters, then to confuse our (ballooning numbers of) enemies. Prior to Johannes Gutenberg, there was the spoken word and hand copied manuscripts. Due to the labor cost of copyists, the Catholic Church was able to maintain a +1,000 year monopoly over information.

The churchmen had access along with elites, the ordinary citizens were left ignorant, with edicts from above and superstitions.

Post- Gutenberg, information cost no more than ink on paper; it could not be hoarded and so the monopoly of the priests and bishops was ended. Because information on a page could be filed and accumulated, the amount of information within the reach of a literate person exploded … along with the numbers of literate persons!

As an unintended consequence, the human capacity for memory and the oral tradition became diminished, then largely disappeared. It was unnecessary to recall Beowulf from memory, only remember where to find it on a shelf.

Fast forward and with the Internet has arrived with the thump-and-drag of the one-legged John Silver. The quality of information has relentlessly deteriorated even as it has become ubiquitous.

ur smart phones know in advance what we want for dinner or where to park but nothing tells us what is really happening with our country! The information we need to thrive … or even survive … does not fall to hand. With the incoming tides of ‘trivinformation’ comes a decreasing ability to comprehend.

We have no need to learn because we can find an app that does it for us. As a consequence … we have become bereft of the ability to make good judgements. We equivocate, rationalize every evil, we compartmentalize … our moral compasses are shut off, we drink the Kool-Aid and beg for more.

With time, appreciation for all non-consumable things vanishes because our capacity for empathy is exhausted, what remains is the immediate-term stimulus of acquisition and little else. We have come full circle; from beasts, to partly civilized due to our mastery of spoken language, to print-educated, civilized literates … to machine-dependent incompetents and back to beasts.

Consequences emerge to take the form of a post-Warholian dark age of electronic dazzle; the deathly white light where Candy Crush™ stands as equal to Milton. We have become our appetites and nothing more …

The fearsome and relentless Trianglial of Doom, no mincing words here or cacophony; this is the chart that kicks the modern world in the balls and leaves it gasping, by TFC Charts (click for big). With two major wars and a handful of minor ones in petroleum producing regions the present price movement is unexpectedly down.

Our precious wars are bankrupting the world’s customers faster than the same wars can adversely affect oil supply. Add one more war or two and the entire world oil extraction enterprise will shut down due to insufficient funds!

Witness the change of age:

The Age of Expedients =>
wars raise oil prices into the Age of Consequences =>
wars bankrupt countries so that they cannot bid for oil =>
the drillers become destitute =>
leaving everyone without petroleum.

Economists fail to grasp that people (in aggregate) can indeed go broke. In our world of nearly unlimited finance credit, there seems to be no end to money. This leads economists into believing that there is likewise no end to other things. That when liquid fuels run out the world can turn to ‘something else’ and use it as replacement … something like common rocks: if the price is right the rocks will become fuel.

In a world of endless money, individuals or firms can be marooned without funds but others will ‘gain theirs’ and by doing so have enough to provide a market. Here is the triumph of hopeful expectations over common sense: funds are nothing more than promises made against (often faulty) expectations.

Those whose promises prove empty are bereft of funds, not the other way around. In the Age of Expedients, adding credit => meant more funds available to spend on capital. In the Age of Consequences:

 Adding credit =>
bankrupts the system with credit costs =>
there are less funds available to spend on capital. 

There are less funds because existing claims are exposed as worthless faster than new claims can be created.

Economists have problems with costs because individuals and firms have been so clever in shifting them to unsuspecting ‘others’ across the economic ambit. To the economist, ‘shifted costs’ are little different from ‘no cost at all’. Because he refuses to consider the externalized costs or trivializes them, the economist does not believe there is capital depletion.

In the Age of Expedients more capital can be gained by drilling more holes, in the Age of Consequences the costs of holes added to the costs of credit become become breaking => adding more (costly) holes does not add more capital.

Here, ‘capital’ always means non-renewable resources; capital the basis of all of our so-called ‘production’ (which is really extraction and waste).

In the Age of Expedients, costs are shifted forward by multiples of generations so that great-grandchildren are on the hook for yesterdays’ generations’ waste. The economist blithely assumes that the future will be avoided with time machines or other technological whizmos that somehow denature consequences. Else, he is the cynic, realizing that the future is irrelevant because he, like others in the ‘long run’ will be dead: that consequences are someone else’s problem.

In the Age of Expedients, certain direct actions produced certain predictable results. Rattling the sabers in the Middle East was always good for a ten-dollar pop in the price of crude. Building a road would generate more real estate- and retail ‘growth’. Lowered interest rates would generate more borrowing and spending, it would trigger needed inflation … that fighting a real war would stimulate the economy and increase ‘growth’.

Growth is the reason behind the state of perpetual war that has occupied the United States since the end of World War Two. In the Age of Expedients, there is no penalty for stupidity, all of it contributes to GDP.

In the Age of Consequences, actions produce … consequences. The future becomes the present bringing demands for repayment of old debts that cannot be retired with new loans. The toxic waste of prior generations becomes a problem we cannot move away from. Wars are likewise too costly to fight, there is no growth to give nations second chances at ‘victory’. Instead, the consequence of defeat is permanent devastation.

Waste-infrastructure does not add anything but to the burdens of debt repayment which in turn are stranded as the infrastructure is fundamentally non-remunerative. Perpetual war = national suicide; stupidity now has dire consequences.

The non-linear shift from expedients to consequences emerges as a perilous Fifth Horseman: every habit we have learned during the Age of Expedients is now set to work with deadly effect against us; the time to learn new habits simply does not exist.

The War Against Labor
The businessman’s class war against labor began with the flowering of US industry during the 19th century. The Long Depression in the late-19th century as well as the 1930’s Great Depression were class wars. During the latter, the citizens fought the tycoons with the one instrument that the rich had left them: their refusal to spend their money. Instead, they held onto it, giving bits of paper value while denying it to the tycoons.

Prior to the Depression, the country’s industrial laborers had vented upon them every sort of abuse, and then the full fury of militarized authority: clubs and bats of strikebreakers and Pinkertons, knives in the dark from goons and machine gun bullets from the Army. All of this failed, yet by their refusing to spend, by keeping clear of finance industry speculations, the public starved the tycoons who could not meet the service expense of their own enormous debts; the tycoons and American-style capitalism became wraiths.

The citizens would have destroyed capitalism save for the rise of the powers in the East and the desire on the part of government to accommodate the industrialists … the government needed the products of industry to engage in World War Two. The reader can come to his- or her own conclusion as to the economic necessity for the war and the roles played by the industrialists in enabling Hitler, Stalin and the Japanese in the first place.

After the war came the crusade against Communism. This crusade was of a piece with the prior labor struggles. In America, ‘Communism’ has always been a code word for labor agitation as well as civil rights for blacks. As during the previous periods of labor strife, the crusade against ‘Communism’ was dark and violent.

s Hedges indicates, institutions as well as reputations were destroyed by public witch-hunts, overseas, the US pursued a series of ruinous yet inconclusive wars. When the Soviet Union collapsed — undone by the failure of its agriculture — and China took the path to Las Vegas style ‘reform’, there was no more Communism, no ‘enemy’ that could be superimposed upon the what remained of organized labor.

Keeping in mind that by the time of Communism’s decline and fall, these remains had been thoroughly co-opted by mafia criminals, undone by endless ‘investigations’ and rendered impotent from the inside by union corruption. In place of the Communist boogeyman came the ‘terrorist’.


Still from video of James Foley before he was executed by a member if ISIS. From original article:

The Man in Black, is he a terrorist murderer … or a Navy Seal? Who can say for sure? The government will not tell you only the examination of US interests gives the game away.
In the twilight of empire the US tries again and again to enrage the citizens against the boogeymen it creates by itself; what better, cheaper way to buy some cheap rage than to cut off a man’s head on television?

Already there are Americans fighting again in Iraq, the third (or fourth) attempt to impose our will on that country.

Besides attempting to push up the price of crude, the purpose of our wars is to elevate the price of Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrup-Grumman, Oshkosh, etc. shares. Without perpetual war there are few perpetual defense industry profits, no need for half of the country’s discretionary spending to flow toward the military, and from there to our precious hedge fund managers (gangsters).

In the Age of Consequences, success = failure, assets are now liabilities. There is little on the way to mark the change, certainly nothing discernible in the media or the Internet scramble. Instead of rage and fury, the Fifth Horseman ‘non-linearity’ steals in on little cat feet. We are obsessed with the increase in growth, we equate this with success … not realizing that very same success has instantly become a deadly poison.

Make quick, now; sell more cars and build more freeways, towers, bridges as this process of selling and building is the means by which the car-and-tower building monster annihilates itself.

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Who's got the time?

SUBHEAD: If we don't understand the problem it is impossible to reach a practical plan of action.

By Charles Hugh Smith on 16 January 2014 for Of Two Minds -
(http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan14/whos-got-time1-14.html)


Image above: Modification of old illustration of family watching TV from. From (http://polar.me/blog/2012/06/who-controls-the-media-in-north-america).

When it comes time to assess our grasp of the dynamics of this unprecedented era, how do you reckon historians will grade our collective political "leadership," intelligentsia, central state, corporate leadership and the "common man/woman" citizen? Did we rise to the occasion or did we falter, not in acting to counter the dissolution of the Status Quo, but in simply making a concerted effort to understand the tangled web of lies, corruption, perverse incentives, unintended consequences, simplistic (and utterly misguided) ideologies, not to mention the real-world limits of a supposedly limitless world, that have become the key dynamics of this era?

I suspect future historians (presuming the funding of such scholarly assessments survives) will grade all categories either F or D-. The reasons are not difficult to discern, and it behooves us to understand why we are collectively so ill-prepared to understand our era, much less fix what's broken before the whole over-ripe mess collapses in a heap.

1. Intellectual laziness. Very few people are willing to work hard enough to figure things out on their own. It's so much easier to join Paul Krugman dancing around the fire of the Keynesian Cargo Cult, chanting "aggregate demand! Humba-Humba!" while waving dead chickens than ditch reductionist, naive ideologies and actually work through an independent analysis.

2. Independent thinking is an excellent way to get fired, demoted or sent to Siberia. Though America claims to value independent thinking, this is just another pernicious lie: what America values is the ability to mask failing conventional ideas and systems with a thin gloss of "fresh thinking."

In other words, what the American state and corporatocracy value is the appearance of independent thinking, not the real thing. Since the real thing will get you fired, everyone who works for government or Corporate America masters the fine arts of producing simulacra, legerdemain and illusion. This only further obscures the real dynamics, making legitimate analysis that much more difficult.

3. Relatively few have any incentive to question authority, the state or the corporatocracy. Humans excel at figuring out which side of the bread is buttered, and who's lathering on the butter: self-interest is the ultimate human survival trait (we cooperate because it serves our self-interest to do so).

While we cannot hold the pursuit of self-interest against any individual--after all, who among us truly acts selflessly when push comes to shove?--we can monitor the monumentally negative consequences of self-interest and complicity on the systems and Commons we share.

When roughly half of all households are drawing direct cash/benefits from the central state, how many of those people are interested in doing anything that might put their place at the feeding trough at risk? Sure, people will grouse about this or that (usually related to the conviction that they deserve more or have been cheated out of "their fair share"), but as long as the government payments, direct deposits and benefits keep coming, what possible motivation is there for the recipients to devote energy to investigating the potential collapse of the gravy train?

Corporate America is no different. The store may be devoid of customers, but the employees will strive to look busy to keep the paychecks coming until the inevitable lay-off/implosion occurs. How many Corporate America employees will critique their way out of a paycheck? In an environment this difficult for job-seekers, you'd be nuts to bother figuring out why your division is failing, knowing as you do that the truth will result in the "termination with extreme prejudice" of the naive fools who presented the truth as if it would be welcome.

Does anyone seriously imagine that any employee of a bloated bureaucracy will ever voluntarily challenge the squandering of revenues when that might cost them their own paycheck, bonus, contract for their brother-in-law, etc.? A few protected people (professors with tenure, for example) can be "brave," but their "bravery" is cheap: their protestations cannot trigger termination with extreme prejudice, so the gesture of resistance is just that, a gesture.

4. Those relative few who might have a real motivation to undertake independent analysis have little time to pursue this noble project. They are working absurd hours and enduring absurd commutes. Between getting the bundles of diapers into the elevator and planning what to cook for dinner, there is precious little time or energy left for figuring out the mess we're in. Just getting to a second or third job can suck up a significant amount of time, money amd energy.

And so the busy employee/sole-proprietor/contract worker listens to NPR or some talk radio program for a few minutes, reinforcing their ideology of choice, and turns on the "news" (laughably bad propaganda churned up with "if it bleeds, it leads") as background noise and spends whatever personal time they have on Roku, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. seeking distraction or solace from the daily workload.

In a strange irony, there are plenty of citizens who have plenty of time (recall that Americans manage to watch 6-8 hours of TV a day), but their marginalized status and dependence on the state drains them of motivation to do anything but seek amusement and distraction.

If we don't understand the problem or the dynamics that are generating the problem, it is impossible to reach a solution or practical plan of action. In other words, the four points above doom us just as surely as the dynamics of insolvency, corruption, debt servitude, Tyranny of the Majority, etc. etc. etc.

Choose your metaphor of choice, but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic has a nice ironic texture in an election year, when the "news" will be focusing on rearranging the political deck chairs on the first class deck--at least when there's no celebrity ruckus or "if it bleeds, it leads" to crowd out what passes for "hard news" in a regime dedicated to the distractions of bread and circuses.


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The GMO Stigma Propaganda

SUBHEAD: The media war regarding GMOs is really heating up in conjunction with lawsuit against Kauai.

By Michael Shooltz on 15 January 2014 for Kauai Rising -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-gmo-stigma-propaganda.html)


Image above: An activity book for children in support of biotechnology (GMOs).  From (http://action.sumofus.org/a/monsanto-brainwashes-kids/).

It appears that the info war around GMOs in the media is really heating up in coordination with the Lawsuit against the County of Kauai regarding Bill 2491 by three of the Chemical Companies. The Kauai Farm Bureau has initiated a letter writing campaign by it's members which they plan to "funnel" to the Star Advertiser. That began today with Mr. Gottlieb's article (head of the Cattleman's Association) which follows:

Organic Farming Can't Feed the World Farmers have done a terrible job telling our story, but didn't assume we had to ("State must take lead in GMO debate," Star-Advertiser, Our View, Jan. 12). What could be more important and valued by all than 1 percent of our population growing food for the other 99 percent, with the world's safest and most affordable food supply? The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest and most prestigious scientific society, issued this statement: "The science is quite clear: Crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe." One cannot be for sustainability yet reject science in agriculture. We cannot feed the world with organic farming, which takes more resources in land and water, than conventional and science-based farming. Farmers are under attack from a very vocal minority. We need the silent majority and anyone who values eating to speak up. We pray our elected officials will do what is right, rather than yield to the loud din of fear-mongers and Luddites. Alan Gottlieb Kapolei

In addition the following piece has just appeared in the Hawaii Free Press. It is quite "blatant".
(http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/11580/The-GMO-Stigma.aspx)

The GMO Stigma January 3, 2014 Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could offer a healthier and more secure future for the poor across the world, says Henry Miller, a physician and fellow in scientific philosophy and public policy at the Hoover Institution. Standard rice crops are heavy in carbohydrates but poor in vitamins. Activists in the Philippines recently vandalized fields of "golden rice," a genetically engineered rice crop that contains beta-carotene. As 200-300 million preschool children in developing countries are at risk of vitamin A deficiency (500,000 children go blind each year due to a lack of vitamin A), a vitamin-rich crop such as golden rice is invaluable. Scientists responded to the vandalism, asking for support for crops like golden rice that could save millions from sickness and death, but the fact remains that many people believe that there is a significant difference between GMOs and conventional crops: In fact, many varieties of corn, oats, pumpkins, wheat, black currants, tomatoes and potatoes would not exist in nature were it not for 50 years of "wide cross" hybridizations (moving genes from one species to another). In North American and European diets, it is only wild berries, wild game, wild mushrooms, and fish and shellfish that have not been genetically improved in some fashion. There are no documented cases of harm to humans from genetically engineered crops. Regulations that are not commensurate with the actual level of risk in producing GMOs have inhibited innovation that could otherwise improve global food security. For many potential crops, testing and development has become economically unfeasible. Many places require GPS coordinates of GMO field trials to be provided, which only facilitates vandalism. Until regulators recognize that GMOs are not a dangerous category of research, genetic engineering will fall short of its potential, only hurting millions who could benefit from improved crop developments. Henry I. Miller "The GMO Stigma," Project Syndicate

I went to the Hoover Institution (a part of Stanford University, which is heavily funded by the Chemical Companies) to learn a bit more about it. It was interesting to note that it requires a password to read the resumes of the "Overseers" of the Hoover Institution.

However, Henry Miller, the author of this article has quite the resume and has been a mouthpiece for the Chemical Companies for over 15 years. In fact he was a part of the FDA when they first began to "fast track" their GMO approval process. See a portion of his bio below.

As the Legislature is about to enter session this is a very good time to begin to observe their lawmaking efforts and would also be a very good time to write to your Hawaii State Representatives letting them know that you will be watching their activities in this legislative session, in this election year, very carefully.

Miller served for fifteen years at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a number of posts. He was the medical reviewer for the first genetically engineered drugs to be evaluated by the FDA and thus instrumental in the rapid licensing of human insulin and human growth hormone.

Thereafter, he was a special assistant to the FDA commissioner and the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology. During his government service, Miller participated frequently on various expert and policy panels as a representative of the FDA or the US government. As a government official, Miller received numerous awards and citations.

Since coming to the Hoover Institution, Miller has become well known not only for his contributions to scholarly journals but also for his articles and books that make science, medicine, and technology accessible. His work has been widely published in many languages.

Monographs include Policy Controversy in Biotechnology: An Insider's View; To America's Health: A Model for Reform of the Food and Drug Administration; and The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution.

Barron's selected The Frankenfood Myth as one of the 25 Best Books of 2004. In addition, Miller has published extensively in a wide spectrum of scholarly journals and popular publications worldwide, including

The Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association, Science, the Nature family of journals, Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, National Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Guardian, Defining Ideas, and the Financial Times. He is a regulator contributor to Forbes.com and frequently appears on the nationally syndicated radio programs of John Batchelor and Lars Larson.

Miller was selected by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as one of the people who had made the "most significant contributions" to biotechnology during the previous decade. He serves on numerous editorial boards.

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Newspapers seek Snowden clemency

SUBHEAD: New York Times and Guardian editorial boards recommend clemency for Edward Smowden.

By Staff on 2 January 2014 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/edward-snowden-clemency_n_4529563.html#slide=3074349)


Image above: Edward Snowden smiles during a presentation ceremony for the Sam Adams Award in Moscow. From slideshow in original article.

The editorial boards of The New York Times and The Guardian published editorials on Wednesday, urging the Obama administration to treat Edward Snowden as a whistleblower and offer him some form of clemency.

Seven months ago, the former National Security Administration contractor stole as many as 1.7 million highly classified documents about the U.S. government's surveillance program and released the information to the press. The files revealed how the NSA forced American technology companies to reveal customer information, often without individual warrants, and how data from global phone and Internet networks was secretly intercepted.

While the release of these documents forced Snowden to flee the U.S. and move to Russia, it also alerted the American public -- and many U.S. allies -- of the government's intrusive, unethical and possibly unlawful spying efforts.

Beyond sparking public debate, Snowden's actions have prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the NSA. The suit aims to force the U.S. government to disclose details of its electronic surveillance program and describe what protections it provides to Americans whose communications are swept up during the search for terrorist suspects, Reuters reported.

Eight major technology companies -- including Google, Facebook and Twitter -- have also joined forces to call for tighter controls on government surveillance.

To date, two federal judges have accused the NSA of violating the Constitution, and a panel appointed by President Barack Obama has blasted the agency's spying efforts and called for an overhaul of the program.

On Wednesday night, the editorial board of The New York Times published an editorial that not only described Snowden as a whistleblower but also called on the government to give him clemency.

Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.

The Times noted that none of Snowden's revelations have done profound damage to the intelligence operations of the U.S., nor have his disclosures hurt national security. However, his efforts have exposed the federal government's lack of respect for privacy and constitutional protections.

When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government.

The Guardian, which has been at the forefront of the Snowden story from the very beginning, is also calling for clemency.

Snowden gave classified information to journalists, even though he knew the likely consequences. That was an act of courage.

In November, the White House rejected a clemency plea from Snowden, and told him to return to the U.S. to face trial.

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Reefer madness New York years

SUBHEAD: Time with Timothy Leary, Mexico, Magic Mushrooms, and Reefer Madness.

By Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall on 21 November 2013 for Boing Boing -
(http://boingboing.net/2013/11/21/john-wilcock-participating-in.html)

[IB Publisher's note: This is a three part comic graphic illustrated story published by Boing Boing that looks back on the early 1960s and a New York writer's first introduction to psychedelic drugs.

THE STORY: Part 1

While on an assignment John Wilcock meets an enthusiastic Timothy Leary, wearing red socks, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.


Image above: Detail from Reefer madness Part 1.  Click for full page. From (http://boingboing.net/2013/11/07/john-wilcock-timothy-leary-m.html).

THE STORY: Part 2

Witnessing a dinner with  a spacey Timothy Leary and his fascination with avocados (green butter) and bananas (joyous miracle).


Image above: Detail from Reefer madness Part 2.  Click for full page. From (http://boingboing.net/2013/11/14/john-wilcock-witnessing-tim-l.html).

THE STORY: Part 3

John Wilcock concludes with an invitation to participate in the  Harvard Psilocybin Project - the road to ruin that ultimately leads John to pot.


Image above: Detail from Reefer madness Part 3.  Click for full page. From (http://boingboing.net/2013/11/21/john-wilcock-participating-in.html).

---

Adventure with a Pink Pill
By John Wilcock on 6 September 1962 for The Village Voice -
(http://boingboing.net/2013/11/21/john-wilcock-participating-in.html)

[Boing Boing Editior's note: As an added treat to this final comic tale, here's John's original column on participating in the Harvard Psilocybin Project, from 1962.]

A questionnaire arrived last month from Tim Leary, a professor at Harvard who has been doing research on the effects of Mexico's "magic mushrooms" (teonanacati) on human consciousness. The mushrooms, foundation of some Indian religions, have been synthesized commercially into psilocybin, a small pink pill, and Tim Leary's Harvard group has been testing them on people and noting the effects.

I tried psilocybin about a year ago and reported on the enjoyable and highly euphoric effects. What Dr. Leary wanted to know now was whether there had been any permanent effects or changes in my life as a result. I was able to tell him (as, apparently, 62 percent of his subjects have told him) that my life had changed for the better.

It's always difficult to evaluate what effect a single action has had upon the course of one's life, and to what extent the normal maturing process is responsible, but it's true to say that in the past year I have become happier, more tolerant, less compulsive, and much more of a PARTICIPANT in virtually every phase of activity. I enjoy everything more these days, often with the sort of hearty abandon that wouldn't have been possible at one time in my life.

The simplest things -- reading the newspapers, listening to jazz on the radio, stopping for a hamburger, taking a bubble bath, kissing a girl -- fill me with tremendous anticipation and pleasure. I have become in love with the whole world, while at the same time retaining a healthy contempt for cruelty, greed, inhumanity, and the terrible things that people and countries do to each other.

It would be very unscientific, and potentially dangerous, to believe that these effects came solely from psilocybin, of course, but I do have a suspicion that that one afternoon's experience, coming at a particular time of my life, helped along what would possibly have been a natural course of events.

And I take my cue from a statement by Leary's group (the Center for Research in Personality):

"We have come to believe that psilocybin has the potential to facilitate for an individual the experience of major insights and problem solutions of an intellectual-emotional nature... It is also our conviction that these insights, enlightenment, or solutions provide a firm educational foundation for change in the social or intellectual behavior of the individual."

...In a meeting with representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, which has been kept informed of his research, Dr. Leary's group reported:

"We are convinced that these substances can contribute to human welfare in many ways -- in psychiatry and other forms of social rehabilitation, in creative industry, in education, in defense enterprises, in artistic and cultural pursuits."

And a compilation of reports from 98 of the 157 people who tried psilocybin reveals that 70 percent found the experience pleasant; 87 percent learned something new about themselves and the world; 62 percent report it changed their lives for the better; and 90 percent want to try it again. Leary's initial experiments are now concluded, and he has none of the drug available.

---

FOOTNOTE BY DR. LEARY:
The most important single factor that determines whether a person undergoes a heavenly or hellish experience is his expectancy. If, for example, he takes one of these drugs in a hospital setting, where his contract is to behave as a subject in a scientific experiment and where his every move is carefully watched and noted by attending doctors and psychiatrists, he will almost certainly manifest psychiatric symptoms.

On the other hand, if the drug is taken together with a group of close, loving friends in a warm, familiar environment and the expectancy is to have a joyful, intellectual experience, then the chances for this to happen are very good.

However, if the scene is rebellious or secretive -- fear of being caught by the police, guilt of pleasure, sense of doing something shady and illicit -- the chances are that all these things will become magnified out of all proportion.

---

COMIC CREDITS:
John Wilcock: Author and experimental psychedelic guinea pig will continue with additional chapters of this story in a few months. John still writes a terrific column of news and opinion, posted every week at www.johnwilcock.net.

Ethan Persoff (Twitter) is an archivist, sound artist and cartoonist. His other new comics project is RADIO WIRE.

Scott Marshall (Facebook) is an illustrator, sound artist, and art director, based in New York City. Previous projects include audio work for Woody Allen (Small Time Crooks), and the score for a full-length dance piece by choreographer Lar Lubovitch (Men's Stories).

---

See also:
Island Breath: Tales from The Tube 11/29/08
(Psychedelic surf comic by Rick Griffin in 1971 Surfer Magazine)


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CNN a Nuclear Shill

SUBHEAD: CNN will nationally broadcast the much criticized, pro-nuclear power film Pandora's Promise.

By Staff 1 November 2013 for Democracy Now! -
(http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/7285/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1268695)


Image above: K-Mart parking lot with nuclear cooling towers in background. Still image from "The Atomic State of America". From article below.

CNN will nationally broadcast the much criticized, pro-nuclear power film Pandora's Promise on Thursday, November 7. CNN is airing the film without offering any opposing viewpoints despite requests and petitions from Beyond Nuclear and others.

To help provide balance and a critical perspective on nuclear power, The Atomic States of America film will be available to view free online from November 6 - 8. Atomic States provides a comprehensive exploration of the history and impact of nuclear power to date, and investigates the truths and myths about nuclear energy.

Please help promote the film's availability to your networks and friends.

[IB Publisher's note: This film was available as of this morning 11/4/13 on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/52484743)]

• HOST A LOCAL SCREENING - specialtystudios.com/page.asp&content_id=33502
• PURCHASE A DVD - videoproject.com/atstofam.html

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By Staff on 15 October 2013 for the Video Project -
(http://www.videoproject.com/atstofam.html)


Image above: Detail for poster for "The Atomic State of America". From article above.

In 2010, the United States approved the first new nuclear power plant in 32 years, heralding a "Nuclear Renaissance". But that was before the Fukushima accident in Japan renewed a fierce public debate over the safety and viability of nuclear power.

The Atomic States of America journeys to nuclear reactor communities around the country to provide a comprehensive exploration of the history and impact to date of nuclear power, and to investigate the truths and myths about nuclear energy.

From the gates of Three Mile Island, to the cooling ponds of Braidwood, IL, the film introduces people who have been on the front lines of this issue for decades: community advocates, investigative journalists, renowned physicists, nuclear engineers, Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors, and former government leaders.

Based in part on Kelly McMasters' book "Welcome to Shirley", about growing up in the shadow of the Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island, the film explores the evidence for serious health consequences documented by people living in Shirley, as well as near other nuclear facilities. Their concerns call into question who can be trusted to provide truthful information, and how much influence the nuclear industry has over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its decisions.

As the nation stands at the crossroads of a possible Nuclear Renaissance, The Atomic States of America inspires informed discussion on the safety, viability and future of nuclear power in the United States.


Video above: Trailer for "The Atomic State of America". From (http://youtu.be/Snq5InfEdlg).

"Recommended. The Atomic States of America does a good job of introducing this difficult and extremely complex topic to the general public."
– Science Books and Films (AAAS)

"Recommended. Powerfully warns of the dangers of a nuclear renaissance."
– Video Librarian

"This is the best audiovisual overview of nuclear power that we’ve seen—clear, engaging, moving, story-rich. The Atomic States of America raises profound questions about our nuclear future. It deserves to be widely viewed, in school and out."
– Rethinking Schools Magazine

"Examines the health risks of living near a nuclear facility, Scientists, government officials, politicians, energy company employees, and citizen-activists tell a compelling story...."
- School Library Journal

“In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, The Atomic States of America casts a timely inquiry into the viability of nuclear energy.”
–Outside Magazine

“A stimulating, well-made piece. A sobering documentary about the dangers of nuclear reactors and a downsized Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
–Hollywood Reporter

“Reasoned and worth engaging…The film builds a convincing statistical case about cancer and nukes.”
-Variety

"Potent, emotionally powerful, and highly revealing, …does an outstanding job of opening our eyes to the reality of nuclear power. Acutely topical....The Atomic States of America convincingly encapsulates both the history of this allegedly clean source of energy and our collective denial of a potentially looming disaster at our aging sites.”
–Sundance Film Festival

“Exceptionally artistic in its storytelling and vision.”
–Bradford Pearson, Frontrow.com

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GMO seed fight on Kauai

SUBHEAD: A battle has erupted in Kauai between residents concerned about health and companies developing GMO seeds.

By Megan Thompson on 20 October 2013 for PBS Newshour-
(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/july-dec13/hawaiigmo_10-20.html)

[IB Publisher's note: This is the transcript from PBS Newshour broadcast on Kauai and GMOs. Video of segment is below.]


Image above: Aerial view of Waimea, Kauai, Note fields and buildings of Dow Pioneer experimental seed operations on east (left) side of Waimea River. On right is the town of Waimea that is downwind and at a lower elevation than the GMO fields that are frequently sprayed with pesticides. From original aricle.

MEGAN THOMPSON: The Hawaiian island of Kauai is known as the garden isle, luring hundreds of thousands of tourists to its lush northern shores. But fewer make it down to the drier southwest side, home to many native Hawaiians, who’ve lived here for generations…and where farming has always been a way of life.

Today these fields are home to large biotech companies developing Hawaii’s biggest agricultural product: seeds. Genetically modified seeds, mostly corn, to be shipped back and grown on the mainland.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Those fields behind me belong to Pioneer, one of the big seed companies here in Kauai. The prevailing winds here blow out of the northeast. And the residents here say that when those winds blow, they bring dust and pesticides from these fields down into their neighborhoods and homes.

And some believe that’s making their children sick.

RANDI-LI DICKINSON: In 2007 I gave birth to my son. And within a day we realized he was seizing. And we found that his brain had hemorrhaged and he lost the whole, entire right frontal lobe.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Six-year-old Nakana Dickinson still has frequent seizures, according to his mother, Randy-Li. After consulting with a pediatric neurologist and blood specialist, she now wonders if all of her son’s problems were caused by the location of their home, in the valley just below the fields.

RANDY-LI DICKINSON: And the only thing I could think of is I lived here this whole time I'm pregnant. And I'm getting this drift of dust constantly with pesticides.

MEGAN THOMPSON: You don't know for sure what the cause was of your son's illness.

RANDI-LI DICKINSON: No. And I-- and that's scary to me. And I can’t know for sure because they’re not disclosing anything to us.

MEGAN THOMPSON: A battle has erupted here in Kauai over the seed farms. More than 150 residents have sued Pioneer. Though Pioneer declined to comment on the litigation, the families allege that dust and pesticides contaminated their homes. They’re also seeking damages for lost property value.

This county council hearing is called to order.

MEGAN THOMPSON: And packed county council hearings in support of a bill, passed just this week, imposing new rules on the seed growers. It creates buffer zones around the fields and forces the companies to disclose what pesticides they're using…when they're spraying… and how much.

Several local doctors had expressed support for the legislation, citing serious health concerns.

RICK GODING: There’s a strong anecdotal evidence that there’s a statistically significant difference in the incidence of cancer, asthma and birth defects.

MEGAN THOMPSON: One pediatrician wrote in an email that he had observed rare heart defects in babies at a rate 10 times the national average. But says years of epidemiological research would be needed to establish the cause.

GARY HOOSER: It's really quite simple. Tell us what you're spraying, what you're growing, and then let us do a study to determine whether people really are getting sick.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Local politician Gary Hooser introduced the bill. He got involved in 2008 after a noxious odor sent several children and a teacher at a school next to one of the fields to the emergency room, complaining of dizziness and nausea.

GARY HOOSER: This is serious, serious stuff that deserves our attention and deserves to be dealt with now.

MEGAN THOMPSON: the seed companies and their employees came out in force to fight the bill.

KU’UHAU GARZA: I want people to know that we are good people and we do the right thing.

MEGAN THOMPSON: the companies said they follow government guidelines on pesticide spraying, and that revealing their farming practices could make them less competitive. What’s more, as some of the largest employers on the west side, they said the bill’s other requirements could threaten their operations and the hundreds of jobs they provide.

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CARMELITA HAUMEA (a GMO seed compnay employee): Most people on the west side is employed by the seed companies. We all live as a community, you know.

MEGAN THOMPSON: The four biotech companies in Kauai own or lease more than 12,000 acres – close to 20 percent of the island’s usable farmland. Their fields bump up against the nearby towns.

Seeds are big business in the state of Hawaii, valued more than $240 million dollars a year; more than triple the second-largest commodity, sugar. Mark Phillipson works for Syngenta, and is president of Hawaii’s seed trade group, which represents Syngenta, BASF, Dow and Pioneer, a subsidiary of DuPont.

MARK PHILLIPSON, HAWAII CROP IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION: The reason that we're here-- is the weather. It's-- there's no winter. We're here-- 365 days a year. So, can get three crops a year. Whereas, if we did this type of research or production on the mainland, we would get one crop-- per year. So, something that would take-- ten-to-12 years to develop, we can do here in three-to-four years.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Phillipson says seed companies have developed better and stronger plants, genetically modified to withstand drought and pests.

Today almost 90% of the corn grown in the United States is genetically modified…and according to one industry study, since 1996, the technology has brought an economic benefit of more than 24 billion dollars to America’s farmers.

KATHY HASKINS: This is a row of conventionally-bred line of corn.  And you can see that there’s a lot of damage here to the ear. That’s all from ear worm. This is the same line – same exact line of corn, but it’s got our “Agrisure Viptera” traits in it and you can see that there’s ear damage at all to this ear. It’s beautiful.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Even though the seed companies are only growing crops for research purposes, they still use conventional farming methods. That includes the application of several so-called “restricted use pesticides” - chemicals regulated by the E.P.A. that can only be handled by people with a special license.

MARK PHILLIPSON: We follow all the federal and state guidelines on pesticide use, and those guidelines are very strict and they're-- monitored.

MARK PHILLIPSON: We are very careful in how we apply the pesticides. We, you know-- measure wind direction, wind speed. It's-- not of any advantage for us to have things drift out anywhere.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Because of a new state registry on pesticide sales, and the lawsuit against Pioneer, some information on what’s being sprayed has started to come out. But the seed companies, which invest billions of dollars in research and development, had been largely reluctant to share more specifics.

GARY HOOSER: On the general use pesticides that you use on an annual basis, can any – are any of you willing to disclose that amount? So I’ll take the silence as a no.

MEGAN THOMPSON: The people in community here have been asking for a few years now to know what pesticides are being sprayed by the seed companies here. How much, when, where. Why has that information not been disclosed?

MARK PHILLIPSON: The reason is not so much there's trade secrets, but it's more of competitiveness.

Fast disclosure of those pesticide use will probably tell me the ingredients that you're using that I might not be using. We each represent a unique company that has a product in a competitive marketplace.

MEGAN THOMPSON: There are a lot of people in this community who say they’re getting sick. And they think it might be the pesticides. What do you say to that?

MARK PHILLIPSON: Probably the first-- people in the community that would get sick would be our workers. And there's no indication of that.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Phillipson also points to a recent study by the Hawaii Department of Health showing cancer rates are no higher in Kauai than in other parts of the state…and other tests showing air and water samples to be safe.

But critics accuse the companies of not following spraying guidelines closely enough. Attorneys in the Pioneer lawsuit say this video they shot shows pesticides blowing off a field near town. And even though many of the pesticides are the same ones used by farmers in the Midwest for example, critics point out they’re being applied during more months of the year here.

RICK GODING: How can you tell me I don’t have a right to know what they’re spraying?

MEGAN THOMPSON: And that’s why some residents including local doctors like Rick Goding believe more research is needed.

RICK GODING: The thing about the physicians is, we want to be very careful. And I think some of them are afraid to say anything because they’re afraid to be perceived to be saying, “They’re spraying, and therefore this is happening.” I’m not saying that. I don’t know any physicians that are saying that.

What we are saying is, they are spraying. And we have some problems. Can we find out more about what they’re spraying and can we look at the possibility as to whether it’s got an effect on some of the significant health problems we have in the community.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Even though that bill requiring the seed companies to create buffer zones and disclose their spraying was passed this week … at least one seed company said it’s exploring legal options to block the legislation. So it could be a long time before these residents get all the information that they’re looking for.


Video above:PBS Newshour segment on Kauai and GMO seed companies.

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America's Absurd Tragedy

SUBHEAD: The poverty of our political Theater of the Absurd is an American Tragedy.

By Charles Hugh Smith on 19 October 2013 for Of Two Minds -
(http://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct13/political-theater10-13.html)


Image above: "The Republic of Amnesia", a painting by Mark Bryan, 2009. From (http://www.artofmarkbryan.com/politics/).

The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater.

All we have left in the U.S. is a deeply impoverishing Political Theater of the Absurd. Policy, theory and governance have all been reduced to competing stage performances in the Theater of the Absurd. The actors are transparently given to farcical overacting in exaggerated dramas drained of meaning; they proceed through the cliched motions as if the audience hadn't seen the same charades overplayed dozens of times before.

"Government shutdown" and "debt ceiling" may have engaged audiences starved for entertainment in a bygone age, but now they exemplify a theater that is so impoverished it can only re-stage tired formulaic dramas with a savage appetite for incompetence and buffoonery.

The poverty of this substitution of theater for actual ideas is best displayed by ObamaCare. The entire complex edifice of ObamaCare is not an expression of policy--it is simply the perfection of state complicity with a private cartel that increases its share of the national income regardless of which set of bad actors are on stage.

As for the alternative "policy," it is nothing but a reversion to the pre-ObamaCare cartel-state arrangement that artlessly combines gross injustice, insensitivity to cost and insane incentives for fraud, skimming, defensive medicine and the pursuit of national chronic ill health as the most profitable state of existence.

That these two variations on state-cartel predation pass for "policy" is a clear indication of the absolute impoverishment of American political/social/economic ideas. We are adrift in a political order that glorifies and rewards overacted farce and punishes policy grounded in actual ideas rather than the theatrical trends of the day.

The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater. The players, bereft of talent and inspiration, chosen for their blind obedience to those benefiting from the eradication of ideas and the replaying of tiresome charades, are blind to the poverty of their performance and political theatrics.

Will the audience ever tire of this cheesy Theater of the Absurd? It seems the appetite of the American public for this sort of play-acting entertainment is essentially bottomless. As a result, so too is our poverty.

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